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Nothing makes the eyes of my American friends glaze over faster than when I tell them how the real Canadian facts behind Argo aren’t much like the Yankee-doodle-dandy film made by Ben Affleck.

They frankly don’t care, and neither do Oscar voters, who gave Argo their coveted Best Picture prize last weekend, and also Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

The story Canadians have known for decades, about how Canuck diplomats Ken Taylor and John Sheardown (who died in January) saved six threatened Americans in the revolutionary Iran of 1979-80, barely enters into U.S. accounts now. Witness this quote from a post-Oscars piece by Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips:

“A vote for Argo was a vote for Hollywood, and for America. Inspired by a real-life CIA mission, Argo told a gripping story of Americans in hiding and their saviour, CIA ‘exfiltration’ expert Tony Mendez, posing as a Hollywood film crew scouting locations in Tehran for a Star Wars-type adventure movie, the Argo of the title.”

Phillips is a smart guy and an excellent critic, but his Oscars wrap makes no mention of Canada’s heroes in the real-life Argo. Neither did a pre-awards piece by New York Times critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, both equally sharp, whose co-written article on the factual accuracy of Argo and other Best Picture nominees succinctly began, “They don’t call Hollywood the Truth Factory.”

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Argo’s Oscar-winning rewrite of history simply doesn’t bother Americans, and to be honest, I can’t say I blame them. If the real heroes of Argo had been British, say, or Belgian, I might not fret either. I just happen to be Canadian and I’m old enough to remember the true story of Argo — which everybody, Americans included, used to call “the Canadian Caper.”

Former ambassador Taylor can’t seem to make up his mind about Argo. He expressed qualms about the film’s factual inaccuracies prior to the Oscars (as did former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, to CNN), then told the Star’s Martin Knelman afterwards he was pleased with the Best Picture win and Affleck’s onstage expression of thanks to Canada.

Then Taylor told the Wall Street Journal he’s still “aggravated” about the film and plans to tell his version on Friday at a New York event for the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, hosted by Canadian Sen. Pamela Wallin, who certainly knows something about controversies. Taylor’s talk will be webcast live.

And while the debate over who did what continues, the NYT’s Dargis and Scott remind us that “invention remains one of the prerogatives of art . . . It is unfair to blame filmmakers if we sometimes confuse the real world with its representations.” In other words, don’t go to your local popcorn palace expecting a history lesson that could pass a lie-detector test, even if Argo movie posters do promise “the declassified true story.”

Still, I miss the days when moviegoers did go to the cinema expecting to find truth, or something very close to it, and not just from documentary films. From the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s, during the celebrated “New Hollywood” era, there was a cachet to depicting reality, even if it didn’t lead to a Best Picture win.

I’m thinking in particular about All the President’s Men, by Alan J. Pakula, a superlative movie and director acknowledged by Affleck as major influences on Argo. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by the Washington Post’s Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the 1976 film makes journalistic accuracy the thrust of its story.

The Oscar-winning script by William Goldman accrues detail, fact by fact, relying on acknowledged truth rather than speculation. For his part, Pakula eschews the Hollywood tropes that Affleck so eagerly embraces in Argo. There are no car chases, airport showdowns or guns firing in All the President’s Men, unlike Argo’s imaginary scenario, and the CIA people are anything but heroic. Instead, Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis make imaginative use of light, space and structure to create an intense feeling of paranoia, of corrupt government vs. honest citizens.

All the President’s Men doesn’t begin with “based on a true story,” the cop-out used by Argo and many of today’s truth-challenged dramas. That’s because Pakula’s film isn’t “just a movie”; it’s an honest effort to depict events that actually happened.

Much of the film consists of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, as reporters Woodward and Bernstein, scribbling notes, dialing rotary phones and expending shoe leather as they doggedly chase down leads about chicanery in the administration of then-U.S. president Richard Nixon, a story that ultimately led to his 1974 resignation.

Pakula and Goldman may have taken a few artistic liberties, such as the narrative compression standard to all movies. But they didn’t invent major dramatic elements for a factual story that was already compelling enough.

Maybe this is why All the President’s Men didn’t win the 1976 Best Picture prize, which instead went to Rocky, the inspirational and mostly fictional boxing drama written by and starring Sylvester Stallone.

Feel-good won out over facts, as happened this year with Argo’s win over main challenger Lincoln, a film that treated history with far more respect.

This is usually the case at the Oscars, although there was a weird double standard at play this time around. While Argo essentially got a free pass for its many pro-American embellishments, the film’s serious rivals Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty were subjected to unusually harsh scrutiny because they were judged somewhat lacking in the “correct” depiction of Americans.

Lincoln was assailed for wrongly showing Connecticut legislators voting to retain slavery, a late-breaking revelation that probably cost screenwriter Tony Kushner the Best Adapted Screenplay award, which instead went to Argo’s Chris Terrio.

Stranger still, and more unfair, was the heat directed at ZD30 for accurately portraying the American use of torture as one of many intel-seeking strategies during the 10-year hunt for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Because ZD30 failed to condemn torture outright, it was damned by many politicians and pundits, who likely contributed to its poor Oscar showing.

Lincoln and ZD30 were far more truthful than Argo, but they both made one major mistake: they neglected to tell stories that Americans (or at least Oscar voters) were completely comfortable with. Nuance doesn’t make you want to pump your fist in the air.

Argo’sthrill-a-minute narrative makes Americans undisputed heroes, even if the heroes are from the same CIA that All the President’s Men damned.

Americans love to be seen as valorous and Hollywood is their chief storyteller. So it makes perfect sense, in this cynical day and age, that Argo would exalt the CIA while downplaying Canada’s role in the rescue mission formerly known as “the Canadian Caper.”

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